Are you listening?

But more importantly, are you responding?

Over the past few days, I've been struggling with places in my heart that have been deeply pierced. It's crazy, but it seems like every wound in my heart has come back up. I've been defaulting to hermit status. To be honest, I've had to force myself to leave my house and reach out to my friends. Part of it is the post conference letdown. And part of it, I hate to say, is God saying, "it's time."

On Tuesday, I spent a good amount of time going back and forth about whether or not I was going to church. But I just had this feeling that said, "go." At first, I wasn't too into it, and then Chip said something that really got me thinking. I'm still chewing, and don't have enough to really spit out, but it's in there. So I was I glad that I responded to that small voice, telling me I needed to go.

Tonight, as I flipped through the channels, I kept passing the Joyce Meyer show. I used to watch it all the time, but when life got busy, it sort of got shuffled to the side. But, as the feeling I needed to watch it wouldn't go away, I went ahead and put the show on. So crazy, because she never talked about anything that I've been dealing with, and yet almost every word out of her mouth spoke to the things my heart needed the most.

I point these things out because they weren't spectacular burning bush moments of God calling down from above to say, "hey, this is the message I have for you." Instead, they were tiny little feelings, easy to ignore, easy to think that they were something else. The feeling itself wasn't the answer. I had to actually respond. And then, that's where God met my need.

It's important to take a look back and see when and how God speaks. There's not a formula, even though sometimes we want to hear it.

One of the questions Chip asked is one that I've been asked a number of times before. And I thought I had the answer. But this week, I really thought about it. He challenged us to take a look at following Jesus. Which got me to wondering what I was willing to do. I thought about Paul, and how he felt he was so unworthy of Christ, that he asked to be crucified upside down instead. The honest wimpy Danica is going to tell you that I'm scared to death of God asking me to do something like that. My worst fear as a follower of Christ is that I'm going to be asked to do something like that and I'll chicken out.

Oddly enough, that wasn't one of the original questions I was pondering. But suddenly, it became the most important. Then, tonight, as Joyce talked about a whole slew of things, I realized that the things God asks of me are different from what He asks of others. Living in suburban America, I probably will never face the question of execution via crucifixion. However, I'll be asked other questions. Like Tuesday, when He asked me, in a very subtle way, to go to church. And tonight, when I could've done a lot of other things, like read one of the new books burning a hole in my TBR pile, I chose to watch a show because He nudged me in that direction.

Sometimes what we're listening for isn't what He's trying to tell us. The key is keeping our ears open and obeying, even if it seems trivial.